There have been so many times I wanted to post on events and issues. It seems that other stuff always pushed me away from one topic to the next, and I never took the time to write about it until poof! the next “thing” came along.

Friday morning, my 89-year-old mother fainted while getting undressed for a shower. She and my late father moved in with my oldest sister in 2013 when they were 85. My mom battled dementia for years and had started having falls at home. My father could no longer manage to pick her up off of the floor. My heroic and loving sister redid her townhouse so they would have a safe place to live. Unfortunately, my father’s health began a precipitous decline, and he died in 2015. Back to my mother.

My sister took my mom to the hospital for evaluation where it was discovered she had a bladder infection and was in renal failure. By Monday she was dead.

During this traumatic time, the country caught on fire. Friday night began a long nightmare weekend for Charlottesville Virginia. I could not believe my eyes when I saw hundreds of KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching across the campus of the University of Virginia with torches. They were chanting racist slurs. They intimidated protesters. I felt as if I was watching film from the 1920s. The Klan? Really?

Then Saturday proved everyone’s worst fears. The folly of a judge denying the city the right to change the venue of the rally became evident. There was not enough room for the police to keep the Klan/Nazi rally participants and the protesters apart. Violence broke out. Three people died, including a young woman who was run over by a Klan sympathizer. Dozens of others were injured.

Is this 2017 America, I wondered.

Next came the incoherence of the President. “Many sides” on Saturday, a robotic denouncing of the groups by name on Monday, then nearly a full throttled defense of the white nationalists on Tuesday. The passion of the President was at fever pitch as he defended the statues dedicated to the generals who fought to secede and start their own country with slavery at its core. The President conflated an act of treason with the Revolutionary War. I truly was sick to my stomach.

My family is changed forever now that both parents are gone. I believe our nation has been changed forever by a man who clearly is not fit for the Presidency. This will be a moment in history which, as FDR stated so well, will live in infamy.

As I said, it was the weekend from hell. There is more to the story of my family, which is making this much harder for me. I hope that we do not find there is much more to the story of Charlottesville which will make things harder for our nation.